One of the most deceptive things about public versus private education is the way private schools control admission and retention in ways public schools cannot. Thus, it can easily appear to show private schools to be out-performing public schools. At the end of the day, the people pushing for private school funding at tax-payer expense really aren’t all that interested in education. Indoctrination into a particular religious tribe is the ultimate goal, and that cannot be funded by our secular government. I suspect the people pushing this measure would go out of their minds at the mere suggestion an Islamic school receive public money.
Yes! The Kentucky Supreme Court said what I’ve been saying for years, charter schools are not public schools. Charter schools should not be funded by public funds, they are not good for students or the communities and only serve to defund public schools. Religious or not, charter schools have a terrible track record, and while they might be innovative, sometimes bringing new ideas for teaching, they are run like businesses and often close suddenly leaving children and parents in the lurch. Those kids end up being dumped into public school systems that have been robbed to pay for the charter school and don’t have the funding necessary to accommodate the students from the charter since the charter absconded with that funding. Also the students are left at a disadvantage because now they aren’t being taught in the “shiny, new, innovative techniques” the charter was experimenting with, don’t have the fancy equipment they’re used to, and are now in overcrowded classrooms that are struggling to keep up. They aren’t often behind their peers even, because the new techniques don’t always keep up with the standards. And sometimes charter schools are great and provide good services, but I still think we ought to keep the funding in the public schools so they can experiment with new techniques but also can keep up with their student needs.
As for the Republicans always trying to push their agenda despite the public resistance and the law, this is how the fascists work. It’s disheartening to realize that the Republicans have been fascists for at least fifty years, just slowly drip drip dripping their policies into our republic over time, until they found the right moment and figurehead to break out their dictatorship. But looking back (hindsight being 20/20 and all that) they’ve been ignoring their constituents for decades, they have manipulated elections to win even though they are a decided minority across the country, even in red states, and the relationships they have with corporations and billionaires were clearly leading to this. It was all done openly. This issue is about racism, btw, which is the foundation the Republicans have built their entire existence on. Public school choice and all the attempts to defund education are a result of the civil rights movement and integration. Even back when the conservatives were Democrats, this was their raison d’être, racism. Even if some poor white folks get pulled under the bus, they’re fine with it because the poors are all the same, no matter the color, the racism just allows the conservatives to manipulate the white poors into voting for them.
Good for Kentucky. Let’s hope they vote for better when McConnell finally bites the dust. The people of the USA have been exploited by our politicians for far too long. We need to rise up.
Slightly OT, I read that republicans are still competitive in the midterms and I am flabbergasted that they aren’t all facing real challenges in the election. This isn’t about lesser of two evils anymore, this is about Republicans as a whole trying to put us all in camps (all those warehouses are far too much for just the brown immigrants) and not going down without a fight. The Republicans should be looking at embarrassing losses, but they’re still competitive. I’m sick to my stomach.
Well gerrymandering means there are a lot of non-competitive districts. Though it's a fair question to ask why the hard-hit regions don't have a current GOPer getting primaried by a different GOPer.
In terms of Dem vs. GOP, Dems have to stop thinking that they can ever get elected by running on "but Trump is evil." It doesn't work. They need to tell the U.S. voter how they will deal with illegal immigration; how they plan to deal with Chinese IP theft and knock-offs, how they will address budget shortfalls without raising taxes, if not through tariffs. How they plan to deal with Iran and Russia and Syria and Venezuela. How they plan to stop drug imports. Immigration is one of the top issues of the day, most of the public supports legal immigration but is opposed to illegal immigration, yet as far as I can tell the Dems have no easily expressed platform on how they plan to deal with it.
It's not all doom and gloom; the Dems will probably get control in the midterm...but that's simply because midterms typically go against the party in control. They're giving away a massive amount of political momentum by refusing to articulate positions on the most pressing issues of the day. Many of them seem to think that '[points at Trump]' is sufficient to get a voter to fill in their bubble. In bright blue districts that can work. In purple areas, it typically won't. Look, everyone already knows how Trump governs. You don't need to tell the public that, they're keenly aware of it. If you want to swing the vote, you need to tell the public how YOU will govern.
Yes, democrats need to define their platform, however everything you listed are issues because of Trump. We do need clearly defined goals to address these issues, but until we get rid of the folks causing them, there’s nothing that can be done. Let’s also not forget that when democrats are in charge, these issues are resolved, so even if they aren’t specifically talking about their plans, they should be able to run on their histories. Trump won his last election without a platform at all. Like none. He made promises when the feeling moved him but had no clearly defined agenda written, and the Republican Party didn’t even bother writing one either. Their platform was Biden bad, he caused inflation (ignore the reality of his policies), let’s get rid of brown people. I also think we need to get rid of a lot of the democrats already in seats, but the priority is kneecap the regime, dump the republicans enabling it then handle policy.
But let’s just keep doing what we do, demand perfection from dems, allow the republicans to run roughshod over us and keep with the infighting.
"however everything you listed are issues because of Trump."
Huh? No they're not. Illegal immigration has been an issue for the past 45 years; even Reagan had to deal with it. The Ukraine-Russia war is now 4 years old; Trump was not in power when it started. The Assad regime collapsed during the Biden presidency (though as far as I can tell, US foreign policy had little or nothing to do with it). Iran has been trying to build nukes and murdering dissidents for decades. Drug smuggling has also been around for decades.
The only two issues Trump caused is the overturning of Roe and the use of tariffs. And while the Dems got a lot of mileage out of Roe and will continue to get mileage out of Roe, its not the silver election bullet; no national politician is going to get elected if they run on reproductive rights but refuse to engage on illegal immigration policy, tax and deficit policy, foreign policy, etc.
I'm not demanding perfection. But you said you were flabbeghasted that the midterms may be competitive. Well, this is why: because Dems can't tell the voters what they will do in office.
Respectfully, I disagree. They do care about those things -- in that they are explicitly opposed to them. They want unstable communities. They want weak public schools they want weak local economies. That is part of how they exploit the people that make them rich and powerful to gain more wealth and power.
I am beginning to think there are actually two types of christofascist Republicans. The first is doing everything they can to force their version of Christianity in order to gain power. The second is doing everything they can to gain power in order to force their version of Christianity. There is a lot of overlap between the two, and functionally, it is a distinction without a difference. Both types need to be opposed. Both types are bad for human well-being.
Religion-based privates schools want to practice discrimination against certain students (LGBTQs, for instance) yet want taxpayer $$$ to fund their personal bigotry? Oh, HELL no!
Don't just nip this in the bud. Nuke it like Kentucky did.
71 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, and rich white conservatives are still trying to get the government to pay for their white flight. Though maybe we should call the more recent version fundie runsie.
A bit OT: The raging debate today at the Christian Post today is about an article titled “Liberal Christian leaders condemn 'cruel and oppressive' US gov't; warn of 'white Christian nationalism'”
Most of the fundie comments are of two varieties: 1) There’s no such thing as Christian Nationalism or 2) The US has always been a Christian nation and we are taking our country back from atheists and fake Christians.
I commented “Three cheers for religious liberty” which has received 2 downvotes in less than 20 minutes.
When they do, they insist the 1A means that the US federal government cannot choose one Christian denomination as the national religion. States can have official Christian denominations if they so choose.
Aye. That's the point. Well, one of two main points why they love charter schools.
The first is that they've never given up on segregation. Not really. Segregation in schools is the entire point that the religious right was conceived. Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones U got very butthurt that they had to admit Black kids into their universities or lose Federal funding. Thus we got the rallying point of "save the babies!" over abortion and a fifty year long plan to corrupt the Federal judiciary with the sort of judges who would ideologically be alright with segregation.
The second, of course, is money. Fuck the students, education is a big pile of money being spent every year that no one is gaining any profit from. No real opportunities to get a piece of the pie. And Republicans cannot have that.
Jesus, we must rid ourselves of these cruel greedy assholes. The whole point of “school choice” and the accompanying vouchers is to bankrupt the public school system, and after they close, you can bet your ass the republicans will yank those vouchers away, thereby ensuring that poor people cannot get their children educated and creating a lower class. Which is the entire goddamn point
It’s not like the vouchers are going to poor people anyway. I do t know the exact numbers but the majority of the vouchers went to kids that were already attending private schools, meaning they went to people who could already afford them, and once the vouchers were passed the private schools increased their tuition so that even with the vouchers, poor folks couldn’t afford the schools. This has not allowed any working class and poor people from having a choice in schools. They don’t want the working class to be educated.
One more state rejects religious charter schools. I will admit to being more than a little surprised, albeit pleasantly so. Andy Beshear has proven to be the kind of governor I wish we had in Ohio in acting against charter schools. Such schools are apparently okay in the Buckeye State, as former governor John Kasich had no problem in approving them, and Mike DeWine, even more of a born-again Christian, has done nothing to stop them.
But that's beside the point. States are waking up to the idea that religious charter schools are NOT in their best interest, nor in that of the students or parents who might press them into service. A healthy, well-funded public school system IS far more beneficial.
Not too much to say about this at all. But it’s one more demonstration that conservative religion in America is all about religious power, public money converted into religious money, and religious Dominion.
And yet, the people of Kentucky keep voting for the people that keep them at the very low – not quite the lowest— ratings of public well-being.
Key Public Well-Being Data for Kentucky:
Health Status: Ranked 41st by WKYT, America's Health Rankings. It is consistently in the bottom for overall health, with high rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
Life Expectancy: Kentucky has one of the shortest life expectancies in the U.S., ranking 4th lowest at approximately 74.77 years.
Respiratory Issues: The state has the 4th highest mortality rate for chronic lower respiratory disease and experiences very high levels of respiratory illness, including COVID-19, RSV, and influenza.
Healthcare Access & Costs: Despite uninsured rates dropping significantly to 5.6% by 2023 due to Medicaid expansion, the state ranks in the bottom half for overall health system performance, with residents experiencing high costs and care delays.
Social & Economic Factors: It ranks 45th in healthcare, 34th in fiscal stability, and 24th in infrastructure, according to U.S. News & World.
This push to take public funds for use by a group that does not pay into that fund is counter to conservative principles. A true conservative wants to reduce money going out in an attempt to balance the budget, and once the budget is balanced, give the money back to the taxpayers. This story, and others like it, show that MAGA Christians want to break government, break democracy and destroy America. Good job Kentucky but I worry about the one third of voters who did want to give away tax dollars to a private group.
Conservatism as it once was in the US might as well be dead now, supplanted with Trumpian greed and Christian evangelical madness. Personally, I think that genuine conservatism has its place in our government.
What a shame so many Republicans these days probably couldn't tell you what conservatism actually IS.
I don’t think they’ve changed so much as they are now acutely aware that the old power structure is shifting as the US is becoming more diverse. It’s a blatant attempt to hold on to and consolidate power via force. And indeed all “republicans” left are boot licking loyalists who will pretend later that they never stood up and wildly clapped for Dear Leader during the SOTU speech (if you can call it that) where he addressed his subjects.
I added another end thought to that, but I do think many current democrats are also upholding this power structure as well, which is why they are so lame (stand for nothing) and have done little to protect us from this authoritarian nightmare. Brighter days ahead as this change is inevitable. I’m calling it the “death rattle” ✨
Anytime any of those asshats want to make any kind of specious claim about what they did and did not do during the Trump regime, I want someone to pull a Warner Wolf and say, "Let's go to the videotape!"
That may just be effective in both shutting them up and maybe getting them to reflect on their actions.
One of the most deceptive things about public versus private education is the way private schools control admission and retention in ways public schools cannot. Thus, it can easily appear to show private schools to be out-performing public schools. At the end of the day, the people pushing for private school funding at tax-payer expense really aren’t all that interested in education. Indoctrination into a particular religious tribe is the ultimate goal, and that cannot be funded by our secular government. I suspect the people pushing this measure would go out of their minds at the mere suggestion an Islamic school receive public money.
I wish an Islamic school would try this. I'd love to see some heads explode over it.
Or TST. “The Satanic Temple Academy”
I buy lottery tickets when the jackpot exceeds 1 billion. Man, the charities I would fund with that kind of money.
Conservatives are LOSING THEIR MINDS over anything and everything Mamdani does including efforts to shovel snow ⛄️
He lives rent-free in their heads
Btw, in 24 years I’ve never seen these sidewalks so clear of snow directly following a major snowstorm 😂
Let's heal the divide...https://streamable.com/yj428j
The more that religion tries to force its way into the public sector, the greater the cry to tax those religious institutions should become.
Tax the fucken churches! Frank Zappa-1980
Fantastic! Kudos to Kentucky's SC and their UNANIMOUS decision.
To xtians and their charter schools: Want money to fund your ignorance? Pray to your god through his son for what you want like Jesus TOLD you to do.
Dear God, please make the taxpayers of Kentucky pay for our private schools. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Good news is always appreciated.
I know, right 😺
Yes! The Kentucky Supreme Court said what I’ve been saying for years, charter schools are not public schools. Charter schools should not be funded by public funds, they are not good for students or the communities and only serve to defund public schools. Religious or not, charter schools have a terrible track record, and while they might be innovative, sometimes bringing new ideas for teaching, they are run like businesses and often close suddenly leaving children and parents in the lurch. Those kids end up being dumped into public school systems that have been robbed to pay for the charter school and don’t have the funding necessary to accommodate the students from the charter since the charter absconded with that funding. Also the students are left at a disadvantage because now they aren’t being taught in the “shiny, new, innovative techniques” the charter was experimenting with, don’t have the fancy equipment they’re used to, and are now in overcrowded classrooms that are struggling to keep up. They aren’t often behind their peers even, because the new techniques don’t always keep up with the standards. And sometimes charter schools are great and provide good services, but I still think we ought to keep the funding in the public schools so they can experiment with new techniques but also can keep up with their student needs.
As for the Republicans always trying to push their agenda despite the public resistance and the law, this is how the fascists work. It’s disheartening to realize that the Republicans have been fascists for at least fifty years, just slowly drip drip dripping their policies into our republic over time, until they found the right moment and figurehead to break out their dictatorship. But looking back (hindsight being 20/20 and all that) they’ve been ignoring their constituents for decades, they have manipulated elections to win even though they are a decided minority across the country, even in red states, and the relationships they have with corporations and billionaires were clearly leading to this. It was all done openly. This issue is about racism, btw, which is the foundation the Republicans have built their entire existence on. Public school choice and all the attempts to defund education are a result of the civil rights movement and integration. Even back when the conservatives were Democrats, this was their raison d’être, racism. Even if some poor white folks get pulled under the bus, they’re fine with it because the poors are all the same, no matter the color, the racism just allows the conservatives to manipulate the white poors into voting for them.
Good for Kentucky. Let’s hope they vote for better when McConnell finally bites the dust. The people of the USA have been exploited by our politicians for far too long. We need to rise up.
Slightly OT, I read that republicans are still competitive in the midterms and I am flabbergasted that they aren’t all facing real challenges in the election. This isn’t about lesser of two evils anymore, this is about Republicans as a whole trying to put us all in camps (all those warehouses are far too much for just the brown immigrants) and not going down without a fight. The Republicans should be looking at embarrassing losses, but they’re still competitive. I’m sick to my stomach.
𝑆𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑂𝑇, 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛.
Well gerrymandering means there are a lot of non-competitive districts. Though it's a fair question to ask why the hard-hit regions don't have a current GOPer getting primaried by a different GOPer.
In terms of Dem vs. GOP, Dems have to stop thinking that they can ever get elected by running on "but Trump is evil." It doesn't work. They need to tell the U.S. voter how they will deal with illegal immigration; how they plan to deal with Chinese IP theft and knock-offs, how they will address budget shortfalls without raising taxes, if not through tariffs. How they plan to deal with Iran and Russia and Syria and Venezuela. How they plan to stop drug imports. Immigration is one of the top issues of the day, most of the public supports legal immigration but is opposed to illegal immigration, yet as far as I can tell the Dems have no easily expressed platform on how they plan to deal with it.
It's not all doom and gloom; the Dems will probably get control in the midterm...but that's simply because midterms typically go against the party in control. They're giving away a massive amount of political momentum by refusing to articulate positions on the most pressing issues of the day. Many of them seem to think that '[points at Trump]' is sufficient to get a voter to fill in their bubble. In bright blue districts that can work. In purple areas, it typically won't. Look, everyone already knows how Trump governs. You don't need to tell the public that, they're keenly aware of it. If you want to swing the vote, you need to tell the public how YOU will govern.
Yes, democrats need to define their platform, however everything you listed are issues because of Trump. We do need clearly defined goals to address these issues, but until we get rid of the folks causing them, there’s nothing that can be done. Let’s also not forget that when democrats are in charge, these issues are resolved, so even if they aren’t specifically talking about their plans, they should be able to run on their histories. Trump won his last election without a platform at all. Like none. He made promises when the feeling moved him but had no clearly defined agenda written, and the Republican Party didn’t even bother writing one either. Their platform was Biden bad, he caused inflation (ignore the reality of his policies), let’s get rid of brown people. I also think we need to get rid of a lot of the democrats already in seats, but the priority is kneecap the regime, dump the republicans enabling it then handle policy.
But let’s just keep doing what we do, demand perfection from dems, allow the republicans to run roughshod over us and keep with the infighting.
"however everything you listed are issues because of Trump."
Huh? No they're not. Illegal immigration has been an issue for the past 45 years; even Reagan had to deal with it. The Ukraine-Russia war is now 4 years old; Trump was not in power when it started. The Assad regime collapsed during the Biden presidency (though as far as I can tell, US foreign policy had little or nothing to do with it). Iran has been trying to build nukes and murdering dissidents for decades. Drug smuggling has also been around for decades.
The only two issues Trump caused is the overturning of Roe and the use of tariffs. And while the Dems got a lot of mileage out of Roe and will continue to get mileage out of Roe, its not the silver election bullet; no national politician is going to get elected if they run on reproductive rights but refuse to engage on illegal immigration policy, tax and deficit policy, foreign policy, etc.
I'm not demanding perfection. But you said you were flabbeghasted that the midterms may be competitive. Well, this is why: because Dems can't tell the voters what they will do in office.
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑓 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠, 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑—𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑—ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛.
Respectfully, I disagree. They do care about those things -- in that they are explicitly opposed to them. They want unstable communities. They want weak public schools they want weak local economies. That is part of how they exploit the people that make them rich and powerful to gain more wealth and power.
I am beginning to think there are actually two types of christofascist Republicans. The first is doing everything they can to force their version of Christianity in order to gain power. The second is doing everything they can to gain power in order to force their version of Christianity. There is a lot of overlap between the two, and functionally, it is a distinction without a difference. Both types need to be opposed. Both types are bad for human well-being.
Religion-based privates schools want to practice discrimination against certain students (LGBTQs, for instance) yet want taxpayer $$$ to fund their personal bigotry? Oh, HELL no!
Don't just nip this in the bud. Nuke it like Kentucky did.
71 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, and rich white conservatives are still trying to get the government to pay for their white flight. Though maybe we should call the more recent version fundie runsie.
A bit OT: The raging debate today at the Christian Post today is about an article titled “Liberal Christian leaders condemn 'cruel and oppressive' US gov't; warn of 'white Christian nationalism'”
Most of the fundie comments are of two varieties: 1) There’s no such thing as Christian Nationalism or 2) The US has always been a Christian nation and we are taking our country back from atheists and fake Christians.
I commented “Three cheers for religious liberty” which has received 2 downvotes in less than 20 minutes.
> "...fake Christians."
(imagined conversation)
- You're a fake Christian.
* No, YOU'RE a fake Christian!
- Am not!
* Are too!
- Die in Hell heretic. BOOM 💣
Not bad. But you need to include cherry-picked bible verses to support your side.
I would suggest that the fundie commenters should actually READ the US Constitution, but I doubt they would bother.
Even if they do read it, they won’t comprehend what the words mean.
When they do, they insist the 1A means that the US federal government cannot choose one Christian denomination as the national religion. States can have official Christian denominations if they so choose.
They don't read it for its meaning. They parse it looking for ways to circumvent it.
That's about par for the course. 😝
"A charter school may limit its admissions."
Aye. That's the point. Well, one of two main points why they love charter schools.
The first is that they've never given up on segregation. Not really. Segregation in schools is the entire point that the religious right was conceived. Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones U got very butthurt that they had to admit Black kids into their universities or lose Federal funding. Thus we got the rallying point of "save the babies!" over abortion and a fifty year long plan to corrupt the Federal judiciary with the sort of judges who would ideologically be alright with segregation.
The second, of course, is money. Fuck the students, education is a big pile of money being spent every year that no one is gaining any profit from. No real opportunities to get a piece of the pie. And Republicans cannot have that.
Jesus, we must rid ourselves of these cruel greedy assholes. The whole point of “school choice” and the accompanying vouchers is to bankrupt the public school system, and after they close, you can bet your ass the republicans will yank those vouchers away, thereby ensuring that poor people cannot get their children educated and creating a lower class. Which is the entire goddamn point
It’s not like the vouchers are going to poor people anyway. I do t know the exact numbers but the majority of the vouchers went to kids that were already attending private schools, meaning they went to people who could already afford them, and once the vouchers were passed the private schools increased their tuition so that even with the vouchers, poor folks couldn’t afford the schools. This has not allowed any working class and poor people from having a choice in schools. They don’t want the working class to be educated.
One more state rejects religious charter schools. I will admit to being more than a little surprised, albeit pleasantly so. Andy Beshear has proven to be the kind of governor I wish we had in Ohio in acting against charter schools. Such schools are apparently okay in the Buckeye State, as former governor John Kasich had no problem in approving them, and Mike DeWine, even more of a born-again Christian, has done nothing to stop them.
But that's beside the point. States are waking up to the idea that religious charter schools are NOT in their best interest, nor in that of the students or parents who might press them into service. A healthy, well-funded public school system IS far more beneficial.
Let's hope more states jump on this bandwagon.
I suspect those state judges knew full well they would be reversed by federal courts should things get that far.
Not too much to say about this at all. But it’s one more demonstration that conservative religion in America is all about religious power, public money converted into religious money, and religious Dominion.
And yet, the people of Kentucky keep voting for the people that keep them at the very low – not quite the lowest— ratings of public well-being.
Key Public Well-Being Data for Kentucky:
Health Status: Ranked 41st by WKYT, America's Health Rankings. It is consistently in the bottom for overall health, with high rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
Life Expectancy: Kentucky has one of the shortest life expectancies in the U.S., ranking 4th lowest at approximately 74.77 years.
Respiratory Issues: The state has the 4th highest mortality rate for chronic lower respiratory disease and experiences very high levels of respiratory illness, including COVID-19, RSV, and influenza.
Healthcare Access & Costs: Despite uninsured rates dropping significantly to 5.6% by 2023 due to Medicaid expansion, the state ranks in the bottom half for overall health system performance, with residents experiencing high costs and care delays.
Social & Economic Factors: It ranks 45th in healthcare, 34th in fiscal stability, and 24th in infrastructure, according to U.S. News & World.
Just stoopid.
What they need is more Jesus. With more Jesus they can move up to number two.
Number two : 💩
I guess if they are number two, they have to try hard harder
But trying harder really Hertz sometimes...
This push to take public funds for use by a group that does not pay into that fund is counter to conservative principles. A true conservative wants to reduce money going out in an attempt to balance the budget, and once the budget is balanced, give the money back to the taxpayers. This story, and others like it, show that MAGA Christians want to break government, break democracy and destroy America. Good job Kentucky but I worry about the one third of voters who did want to give away tax dollars to a private group.
Conservatism as it once was in the US might as well be dead now, supplanted with Trumpian greed and Christian evangelical madness. Personally, I think that genuine conservatism has its place in our government.
What a shame so many Republicans these days probably couldn't tell you what conservatism actually IS.
I don’t think they’ve changed so much as they are now acutely aware that the old power structure is shifting as the US is becoming more diverse. It’s a blatant attempt to hold on to and consolidate power via force. And indeed all “republicans” left are boot licking loyalists who will pretend later that they never stood up and wildly clapped for Dear Leader during the SOTU speech (if you can call it that) where he addressed his subjects.
That may not be the whole deal, but it's likely a considerable part of it!
I added another end thought to that, but I do think many current democrats are also upholding this power structure as well, which is why they are so lame (stand for nothing) and have done little to protect us from this authoritarian nightmare. Brighter days ahead as this change is inevitable. I’m calling it the “death rattle” ✨
Anytime any of those asshats want to make any kind of specious claim about what they did and did not do during the Trump regime, I want someone to pull a Warner Wolf and say, "Let's go to the videotape!"
That may just be effective in both shutting them up and maybe getting them to reflect on their actions.
Yes!
The Democrats are closer to actual conservatism.
That may well be the case. How many non-Americans have told us that the Democratic party these days is far more center-right than on the left at all!
How many Americans have been saying it? I have been for a while.
if only people voted the way they poll. sadly and to the detriment of all of us an “R” on the ballot is generally as far as they can see.
OT: Gorgeous take on SOTU by Jamelle Bouie as always:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVNIpnLE4Bh/?igsh=MWRrenpzcXlnb293bg==